In the recent election in Virginia, 19-year-old Cameron Drew ran for a seat on the Surry County Board of Supervisors and won by a mere 10 votes. Even more interesting, the candidate he beat was his high school teacher of civics, history, and government.
Drew won 345 votes. His former teacher, Kenneth Bell, received 335.
The New York Times wrote:
The election, to represent the Dendron district, wasn’t contentious. In fact, Mr. Drew said he remained “very close” with his former teacher, fondly recalling that Mr. Bell twice took him to Richmond to shadow lawmakers. Mr. Bell, for his part, said he was “over the moon” when he found out who he would be running against.
“He’s the type of student that if teachers could have a little cloning machine in their classrooms to duplicate, he would be all over the place,” Mr. Bell said.
Surry County, with a population of about 6,500, is in a rural area of southeastern Virginia between Richmond and Norfolk. The five members of the county board serve four-year terms.
A seat opened up in July when a board member resigned, and both Mr. Bell and Mr. Drew raised their hands for an interim appointment. The board seated Mr. Bell. Mr. Drew then gathered the 125 signatures needed to get on the ballot for Tuesday’s special election.
Kenneth Bell was appointed to a vacant seat on the Surry County Board of Supervisors earlier this year.Credit…Kenneth Bell
“I saw that the youth wasn’t always taken care of or just appreciated, so I was like, ‘Hey, it’s time for me to step up,’” said Mr. Drew, who is studying business administration at Virginia Peninsula Community College in Hampton, Va.
He made direct-to-camera appeals to voters on Instagram, dressed in a suit and positioning himself as someone “who’s looking to move Surry forward, while retaining our rural charm,” as he put it in one post…
Mr. Bell said that, because of his affection for Mr. Drew, he didn’t campaign aggressively.
Mr. Drew reported spending $2,295 on his campaign, according to the Virginia Public Access Project, a nonpartisan group that tracks voting data. Mr. Bell spent nothing.
Mr. Bell and Mr. Drew, neither of whom ran on a party line, largely agreed on the issues and held just one joint town hall-style forum. Describing himself as a philanthropist, Mr. Drew told the audience, “It’s time to bring young minds to the table.”
The campaign centered on local issues, though some, such as affordable housing, have resonated nationally. Mr. Drew focused particularly on how to incentivize young people to stay in the area.
On election night, Mr. Drew was at a watch party for a mentor of his, Kimberly Pope Adams, who flipped a seat in the House of Delegates, helping Democrats increase their majority.
On the Virginia elections website, Mr. Drew saw that he had eked out a victory — a moment he called “surreal.” Mr. Bell called to concede. They had a pleasant five-minute conversation.
“He was like, ‘If you ever need anything from me, just let me know,’” Mr. Drew said. “He was, once again, still the supportive person he has always been.”
Mr. Bell said there was “not a sad bone in his body” that he lost.
“I have found that is not the answer people in our community want me to give,” Mr. Bell said. “I think everybody wants me to be in a depression and sad. It’s because I know Cameran and I know the quality of a person that he is. And so I can’t be sad.”
Trump ordered U.S. Attorney General Pam Bondi to investigate Democrats who participated in Jeffrey Epstein’s sex trafficking of girls and young women. Apparently, it’s ok for Republicans to mess around with girl victims, but not Democrats.
As Attorney General of Florida from 2011 to 2019, Bondi declared that finding and prosecuting sex traffickers was one of her top priorities.
Dean Obeidallah finds it strange that Pam Bondi never investigated Jeffrey Epstein, who resumed his predatory sex trade after serving a light sentence in 2008. By Bondi’s account today, Epstein had at least 1,000 victims.
What we truly need is an investigation into Pam Bondi. Specifically, why didn’t she investigate Jeffrey Epstein for the countless sex crimes he committed against children and women in Florida when she served as Florida’s Attorney General?!
Taking a step back, when Bondi served for eight years as Florida’s top law enforcement officer, she very publicly declared that investigating and prosecuting sexual predators—especially those who preyed on children–a top priority. Indeed, as Florida’s AG, she announced an initiative focused on “Making Florida a Zero-Tolerance state for Human trafficking.”
To that end, in 2013 she proudly boasted about the arrest of 15 child sex predators as part of a five-day investigation known as Operation e-Guardian. At the time, Bondi stated, “Sadly, sexual predators will use any means available to them, including the Internet, to lure children in order to exploit them. This operation was a great multi-agency collaboration that has brought down 15 child predators.”
And in 2018, Bondi launched a confidential tip website for people to report allegations of past child sex abuse by Catholic priests in Florida. She statedthen that any “priest that would exploit a position of power and trust to abuse a child is a disgrace to the church and a threat to society.” Bondi added, “I am calling on victims and anyone with information about potential abuse to please report it to my office.”
Yet despite this very public commitment to investigate and bring to justice people involved in sex crimes against children—even those committed years earlier–she never announced an investigation into or prosecuted Jeffrey Epstein. (At least no investigation that was publicly reported.)
Stephen Dyer is a former legislator who keeps watch on the ways that Ohio Republicans have cheated public school students. Ohio Republicans love charters and vouchers, even though taxpayers have been ripped off repeatedly for years by grifters.
Look, I like Greg Lawson as a guy. We’ve been on panels together and fought over things on the radio and in other places.
But man, he really, really thinks y’all are stupid.
In an op-ed he had published in the Columbus Dispatch yesterday where he argued that public school districts whine too much about money, he made the following claim:
“State K-12 spending in 2023 was 39.5% higher than in 2010 — and school spending in 2024 and 2025 shows no sign of cooling off: “State funding for primary and secondary education totaled $11.64 billion in FY 23; was $13 billion in FY 24 (a $1.36 billion or 11.7% increase); and is estimated at $13.42 billion in FY 25, the second year of the state budget (a $415.8 million or 3.2% increase).”
See, Greg wants you to conclude something from these numbers: that public school districts are swimming in money and their griping over vouchers and his budget-sucking agenda is bullshit. It’s those greedy bastards in your local school districts that are causing your property taxes to skyrocket.
What he leaves out is that the numbers he’s using to make the districts-swimming-in-money claim include money for charter schools and vouchers.
That’s right.
He’s writing an entire article complaining that school districts whine too much about vouchers taking away money from public school kids by citing K-12 expenditure data that … includes money going to vouchers and charter schools.
Can’t make it up.
I’ll break down his ridiculous claim in two parts.
Part I — Overall K-12 Funding
First, let’s look at the overall claim — massive increases to K-12 spending. Forget about the fact that the voucher and charter money need to be deducted out of that number.
Let’s just look at Greg’s topline claim — the state’s spending tons more now than 15 years ago on K-12 education, so quit whining!
Yes. Spending is up. But you know what else is up?
Inflation.
See, in the 2009-2010 school year, the state spent a total of $7.9 billion on K-12 education. In the 2024-2025 school year, that number was $11.5 billion.
Big jump, right?
Well, if you adjust for 2025 dollars, that $7.9 billion spent on K-12 education in 2009-2010 is the equivalent of $11.9 billion, or about $400 million less than what the state spent on K-12 education last school year.
Let me repeat that.
The state is spending the equivalent of $400 million less on K-12 education than they did 15 years ago, adjusted for inflation.
Funny Greg didn’t mention that.
Part II — Privatizers Force Property Tax Increases
Now let’s look at charters and vouchers. Let’s just set aside how poorly charters prepare kids, or how the EdChoice program is an unconstitutional scheme that provides not a single dollar to a parent or child and voucher test scores aren’t great either, compared with school district counterparts.
Let’s just look at the money.
In the 2009-2010 school year, Ohio sent $768 million to charter schools and vouchers.
Last school year, that number was $2.3 billion.
For those of you scoring at home, that’s a more than 100% increase in funding for these privatization efforts … above inflation!
So while in 2009-2010 the state spent about same percentage of their K-12 spend on the percentage of kids who attended public schools at the time, last year the state spent 77% of their K-12 spend on the 84% of kids who attended public schools.
This cut in the share of state funding going to public school students can be directly tied to the state more than doubling the inflationary increase on charter schools and vouchers over the last 15 years.
Bottom line: What has this meant in funding for Ohio’s public school kids?
Well, in 2009-2010, the state, after deducting charter school and voucher funding, provided $7.1 billion for Ohio’s public school students.
Adjusted for inflation, that’s $10.7 billion in today’s dollars.
(I would also like to add that the 2009-2010 school year was the first year of the Evidence Based model of school funding that I shaped as the Chairman of the Primary and Secondary Education Subcommittee on the Ohio House Finance Committee. We pulled off this investment — greater than last school year’s investment, adjusted for inflation — in the middle of the Great Recession. So it’s not like we had shit tons of money lying around the way lawmakers do now. Which should tell you about the priorities back then vs. today.)
I digress.
Last school year, Ohio’s public school students received $9.1 billion.
That means that Ohio’s public school students are receiving $1.6 billion less, adjusted for inflation, than they did 15 years ago.
Should I mention here that not a single penny of the more than $1 billion going to vouchers is publicly audited to ensure the money goes to educate kids rather than Lambos for Administrators?
Anyway.
Put another way: If Ohio lawmakers and governors had simply kept the same commitment to charter schools and vouchers that they did 15 years ago and kept pace with inflation on their K-12 spend, Ohio’s public school students would have received $1.6 billion more last year than they actually did.
In other words, we’d have a fully funded Fair School Funding Plan.
I’m not asking the legislature or Governor to do anything crazy here. No elimination of vouchers and charters.
This is simply doing inflationary increases and making sure the percentage of state funding going to each sector (public, charter and voucher) matched the percentage of kids attending each sector.
Yes, ladies and gentlemen, if the state had actually let “money follow the child”, Ohio’s public school students would have a fully funded Fair School Funding Plan and there would stillhave a $1.2 billion charter and voucher program!
Instead, state leaders have so overvalued private school vouchers and charter schools that now we have an unconstitutional EdChoice voucher program that doesn’t send a single dollar to a parent or student, charter schools that spend about double the amount per pupil on administration that public schools spend while tragically failing to graduate students, and a school funding formula that’s severely underfunded for the 84% of students who attend public school districts.
While Greg might tell school districts, “Quit your bitching!”, I might humbly suggest that school districts haven’t bitched enough.
So when people complain about property taxes, directly point fingers at the Ohio legislature and Governor because they’re doing what they’ve always done — force you to fund the only thing — public schools — the Ohio Constitution requires them to fund.
It’s governmental malpractice. And our kids are the ones who suffer.
This is a gift article, meaning that non-subscribers may open the link.
Traditionally, the Department of Justice is independent of the administration in power.
Trump has broken down all the guardrails that protected the Department from political interference.
Trump selected Pam Bondi as Attorney General to carry out his wishes. He selected his personal defense attorneys as Bondi’s top assistants. Hundreds of career officials were fired. Thousands have left. The ethics officer was fired, because he insisted that the Department abide by ethics rules. The pardons attorney was fired, because Trump wanted to give pardons to friends, like actor Mel Gibson, who wanted his gun rights restored despite his history of domestic violence.
The Justice Department is now completely under the personal control of Trump. It is an instrument of his whims.
In one example, the Department of Justice sued a prestigious law firm for discriminating against white men, even though the law firm is 97% white. Why? The firm has represented Democrats.
The agency responsible for investigating domestic terrorism has been gutted. Civil rights enforcement has turned to attacking racial inequities and defending aggrieved white men.
The New York Times is the one major newspaper that has not bowed to Trump or capitulated to his threats. We sometimes criticize the Times for its efforts to be “on the one hand, on the other,” but this is not one of those articles.
This is a straightforward demonstration of the politicization and gutting of a bedrock protector of our democracy.
This article documents the early stages of fascism.
Federal Judge Rita F. Lin ruled that the federal government cannot withhold $1.2 billion in funding for medical and scientific research as punishment for alleged anti-Senitism. This is an important victory for free speech, academic freedom, and the First Amendment. The Trump administration’s efforts to impose its views on the nation’s institutions of higher education—and U.S. research funding as leverage is unprecedented in American history.
A federal judge on Friday blocked the Trump administration from imposing a $1.2-billion fine on UCLA along with stipulations for deep campus changes in exchange for being eligible for federal grants.
The decision is a major win for universities that have struggled to resist President Trump’s attempt to discipline “very bad” universities that he claims have mistreated Jewish students, forcing them to pay exorbitant fines and agree to adhere to conservative standards.
A spokesperson for the U.S. Department of Justice did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
The preliminary injunction, issued by U.S. District Judge Rita F. Lin of the Northern District of California, rendered moot — for now — nearly every aspect of a more than 7,000-word settlement offer the federal government sent to the University of California in August after suspending $584 million in medical, science and energy research grants to the Los Angeles campus.
The government said it froze the funds after finding UCLA broke the law by using race as a factor in admissions, recognizing transgender people’s gender identities, and not taking antisemitism complaints seriously during pro-Palestinian protests in 2024 — claims that UC has denied.
The settlement proposal outlined extensive changes to push UCLA — and by extension all of UC — ideologically rightward by calling for an end to diversity-related scholarships, restrictions on foreign student enrollment, a declaration that transgender people do not exist, an end to gender-affirming healthcare for minors, the imposition of free speech limits and more.
“The administration and its executive agencies are engaged in a concerted campaign to purge ‘woke,’ ‘left,’ and ‘socialist’ viewpoints from our country’s leading universities,” Lin wrote in her opinion. “Agency officials, as well as the president and vice president, have repeatedly and publicly announced a playbook of initiating civil rights investigations of preeminent universities to justify cutting off federal funding, with the goal of bringing universities to their knees and forcing them to change their ideological tune.
Universities are then presented with agreements to restore federal funding under which they must change what they teach, restrict student anonymity in protests, and endorse the administration’s view of gender, among other things. Defendants submit nothing to refute this….”
Universities including Columbia, Brown and Cornell agreed to pay the government hundreds of millions to atone for alleged violations similar to the ones facing UCLA. The University of Pennsylvania and University of Virginia also reached agreements with the Trump administration that were focused, respectively, on ending recognition of transgender people and halting diversity, equity and inclusion efforts.
Friday’s decision, for the time being, spares the UC from having to proceed with negotiations that it reluctantly entered with the federal government to avoid further grant cuts and restrictions across the system, which receives $17.5 billion in federal funding each year. UC President James B. Milliken has said that the $1.2-billion fine would “completely devastate” UC and that the system, under fire from the Trump administration, faces “one of the gravest threats in UC’s 157-year history.”
This is not the first time a judge rebuked Trump for his higher education campaign.
Massachusetts-based U.S. District Judge Allison Burroughs in September ordered the government to reverse billions in cuts to Harvard. But that case did not wade directly into settlement negotiations.
Those talks have proceeded slowly. In a court hearing last week, a Department of Justice lawyer said “there’s no evidence that any type of deal with the United States is going to be happening in the immediate future.” The lawyer argued that the settlement offer was only an idea that had not received UC approval. Because of that, he said, a lawsuit was inappropriate. Lin disagreed.
“Plaintiffs’ harm is already very real. With every day that passes, UCLA continues to be denied the chance to win new grants, ratcheting up defendants’ pressure campaign,” she wrote. “And numerous UC faculty and staff have submitted declarations describing how defendants’ actions have already chilled speech throughout the UC system.”
The case was brought by more a dozen faculty and staff unions and associations from across UC’s 10 campuses, who said the federal government was violating their 1st Amendment rights and constitutional right to due process.
UC, which has avoided directly challenging the government in court, was not party to the suit. “This is not only a historic lawsuit — brought by every labor union and faculty union in the UC — but also an incredible win,” said Veena Dubal, a UC Irvine law professor and general counsel for one of the plaintiffs, the American Assn. of University Professors, which has members across UC campuses.
Dubal called the decision “a turning point in the fight to save free speech and research in the finest public school system in the world.” Asked about Friday’s outcome, a spokesperson said UC “remains focused on our vital work to drive innovation, advance medical breakthroughs and strengthen the nation’s long-term competitiveness. UC remains committed to protecting the mission, governance, and academic freedom of the university.”
If there was ever a symbol of decadence, greed, and heartlessness in 2025, it must be the “Great Gatsby” party that Trump provided for his uber-rich friends at Mar-a-Lago in the midst of the government shutdown.
At the same time, 42 million Americans were wondering if their food stamps (SNAP) would be available for the month. The Trump Department of Justice was in court arguing that the administration had no obligation to fully fund SNAP, and the decision was not in the hands of the courts anyway. So, no, as far as Trump was concerned, let the losers go hungry.
The party was indeed decadent, as the food and drink were abundant. Caviar, champagne, truffles, stone claw crabs. No expensive delicacy left behind.
Even more decadent–considering that this is the home of the President–were the skimpily clad showgirls who waved boa feathers to show off their bodies.
If the goal was to display the vast disparity in wealth and income that plagues our society, Trump succeeded.
I’ve gathered a few videos and commentaries. See what you missed.
This is Jon Stewart with commentary on the party and video of the festivities. I especially liked the barely clad young woman in a giant champagne glass. His Mar-a-Lago spiel starts at 5:00.
How low can they go? MAGA television host Megyn Kelly denied yesterday that Jeffrey Epstein was actually a pedophile. People she knows told her that when a man has sexual relations with a 15-year-old, it’s not pedophilia. She seems to agree. After all, she says, a 15-year-old is way different from a 5-year-old.
Here’s the relevant portion of Megyn Kelly’s remarks from the November 12 episode of her show, as reported by multiple outlets:
“I know somebody very, very close to this case who is in a position to know virtually everything. And this person has told me, from the start—years and years ago—that Jeffrey Epstein, in this person’s view, was not a pedophile.
“He was into the barely-legal type. Like, he liked 15-year-old girls. And I realise this is disgusting. I’m definitely not trying to make an excuse for this. I’m just giving you facts, that he wasn’t into, like, 8-year-olds. But he liked the very young teen types that could pass for even younger than they were, but would look legal to a passer-by.
“And that is what I believed, and that is what I reliably was told for many years. And it wasn’t until we heard from [Attorney General Pam Bondi] that they had tens of thousands of videos of alleged— forgive me, they used to call it ‘kiddie porn,’ now they call it child sexual abuse material — on his computer, that for the first time I thought, ‘Oh no, he was an actual pedophile.’
“Only a pedophile gets off on young-children-abuse videos. … We have yet to see anybody come forward and say, ‘I was under 10, I was under 14 when I first came within his purview.’ You can say that’s a distinction without a difference. I think there is a difference. There’s a difference between a 15-year-old and a 5-year-old, you know?”
If I had a 15-year-old daughter, I would not approve of her having sexual relations with anyone, most certainly not a 40-year-old man.
With the government shutdown over, staff at the U.S. Department of Education return with fear for what lies ahead.
Before the election, I assumed that Trump could not shutter the Department because he would never get Congress’s approval. Some Republicans would stop him. That’s why he never sought Congressional endorsement.
But it never occurred to me that he could fire almost all its employees.
At some point, the ED building will have only a handful of people: wrestling entrepreneur Linda McMahon; her secretary or two; her speechwriter or two; and one person to clean her office at night. Oh, and Lindsay Burke, Deputy Chief of Staff for Policy and Programs. Lindsay is McMahon’s brain. She wrote the education chapter of Project 2025. As a fellow at the rightwing Heritage Foundation, Lindsay has been an avid proponent of closing the Department of Education for a long time. Lindsay has the wacky idea that the Department is responsible for raising test scores and it hasn’t.
Cutting the Department from 4500 employees to fewer than 10 is a feather in McMahon’s cap for those who want to abandon any federal reponsibilty for low-income kids and kids with special needs or enforcement of civil rights.
The reopening of the federal government promises to return hundreds of laid-off U.S. Department of Education staff to work—but employees fear that’s no guarantee they’ll return to business as usual.
The sprawling bill passed by the U.S. House of Representatives on Wednesday and signed by President Donald Trump concludes the longest government shutdown in history and funds the federal government through Jan. 30. It also contains a provision reversing the early October layoffs of thousands of federal workers across numerous agencies, and preventing further federal layoffs until the bill’s expiration.
But Education Department staff—who have been a repeated target of the Trump administration’s efforts to wind down the agency and shrink the federal workforce overall—are skeptical that they’ll be able to return to work as usual. The department has been resistant to reinstating employees when ordered to do so over the past year, and has instead kept staff on paid administrative leave—at times paying out millions of dollars each week to employees who aren’t working.
“The continuing resolution language doesn’t do enough to protect public servants. The Trump administration has shown us repeatedly that they want to illegally dismantle our congressionally created federal agency,” said Rachel Gittleman, the president of the union that represents Education Department staff. “We have no confidence that the U.S. Education Department will follow the terms of the continuing resolution or allow the employees named in October firings to return—or even keep their jobs past January.”
Department officials did not respond to a request for comment. With the shutdown concluded, the department posted on X, “Government shutdown is over, and we’re baaackkkkk! But let’s be honest: did you really miss us at all?”
The laid-off workers come from six of the department’s 17 primary offices and include virtually the entire staff who work on key formula grant programs, including Title I for low-income students and Individuals with Disabilities Education Act grant programs.
This is the latest parody interview by the irrepressible Randy Rainbow. It takes place while the East Wing of the White House is demolished in the background.
As usual, Randy treats his viewers to a full dose of gay humor with his song “Big Phony Schmuck.”
Ohio’s public schools have been victimized repeatedly by its Republican legislatures and governors. Charter schools, online schools, and vouchers have ripped off taxpayers and siphoned funds from public schools.
Last week, public school voters said enough.
At the national level, the 31 candidates field by the rightwing Moms for Liberty were defeated. Every one of them.
In cities large and small around Ohio, conservative incumbents who ran for school boards on culture war agendas lost re-election. Outside candidates struggled as well. While off-year elections are quirky, some see ebbing political strength in anti-LGBTQ+ politics.
It was a very good day for public schools in Ohio!
Diane Ravitch's blog 